When you rise in the morning,
give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength.
Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.
~ Tecumseh
Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.
~ Kurt Vonnegut
Rustler Gulch Trail. Crested Butte, CO. July 2018.
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~ John Muir
Today’s yoga view
now must loosen my muscles
with guidance of rocks.
As the nervousness and anxiety mounts regarding the outcome of tomorrow’s votes, I turn to my default emotional-health tool: nature.
This deer showed up in our front yard just over a year ago and today I’m grateful for its grace, beauty, and calming demeanor.
Breathe, Tracy. Breathe . . .
This weekend many, many people are volunteering their time and energy and money to political candidates and causes. I am grateful for the collective passion and commitment aimed at turning this ship around.
This cotoneaster was a volunteer in my yard. I didn’t plant it, one day it just showed up. And now it’s among the most beautiful and vibrant bushes in the garden.
Volunteers are the very best, whether flora or fauna. Thank you all.
Still life with squirrel
rare moment of inaction
in a life of GO!
Hey, Laughing Gull! How about an assist for this lowly writer toiling down below? Could you please tell me how to organize the scenes in this new project?
There’s a bread crust in it for you . . .
I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. ~ Alice Walker
It’s a whole new week and there’s much to be done. I’m gonna try to smile along the way and I hope you do, too.
Let’s do this.
Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.
~ Victor Hugo
Our guest next to Zippy’s hand for scale.
I spent the afternoon working in the yard in preparation for the winter storm and below-freezing temperatures on the way. I cut back perennials and chopped up greens to add to our two compost tumblers and standing bin. Zippy joined me after his bike ride and made the plants from his vegetable garden compost-ready. As he stood over the bin and chopped up tomato plants, he discovered a guest he’d been dreading all summer: a tomato hornworm.
He showed me and said his friend had told him that hornworms turned into swallowtail butterflies. That didn’t sound right so I checked. In fact, tomato hornworms turn into the five-spotted hawkmoth. Either way, that’s quite the transformation. (I do think it’s kinda too bad the horn gets lost along the way.)
The complexity of things – the things within things – just seems to be endless.
I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.
~ Alice Munro
I’m grateful this Hairy Woodpecker’s tap-tap-tap alerted me to his presence. I took this photo last week when it was sunny and warm, but today is rainy and cold. A hard freeze is in the forecast. I hope all my feathered friends stay warm and dry.
Able to survive
despite harsh circumstances
flora and women
Channeling my inner snow leopard.
This day has worn out its welcome so I’m gonna make like this squirrel and exit stage right. Tomorrow is nothing but pure potential. Who knows? I might even wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Because every step in the process is its own milestone.
Here’s to completed manuscripts!
Last year’s invasion
Painted Ladies everywhere
wish they’d come again
For your viewing pleasure, a bit of synchronized perching:
Chamaebatiaria millefolium (also known as Desert Sweet or Fernbush)
Tell me I’m not the only one who sees fluffy kernels.
Tracy Abell 